“Do you ever worry about things?”
“Worry about things! I should say I do. Everybody does.”
“Do you ever have impure thoughts and desires in your heart?”
“Yes, I do.”
“These things are sins, aren’t they?”
“Yes, I suppose they are.”
“These are the things that put the Lord Jesus on the Cross. You have these things in your life, you do not have victory over them and other like sins, and yet you tell me you have no 'problem’ in your Christian life.”
This young college student was led by the Spirit to see the inner meaning of sin and to confess that he did indeed need something in his Christian life that he did not have.
The sin problem is the problem of all problems. If the sin problem in your life is settled in God’s way, you will have the secret of solving all other problems in God’s way. Fellowship with God, peace, joy, freedom from anxiety, power for service, the right enjoyment and use of Bible study and prayer, all of these things and every gift of grace will be open to you when you get the sin question settled. At Victorious Life conferences, Christians come to the leaders and say that they are not troubled in the matter of getting victory over sin, but that they do not get results in their Christian service and they want the Holy Spirit for power in service. In every such case it is found that the real difficulty is the sin question: there is not complete, Spirit-given victory over inward sin. When that is settled the power in service and the results follow.
When God came to choose a name for his Son, some one has pointed out, he went to the heart of the subject and called his name “Jesus,” because it is he that shall save his people from their sins. It is going to the heart of the Christian’s need, then, first to emphasize victory over sin as the road to all other blessings of the Abundant Life.